Before we return to Yue Liuyi’s tale, the lens swivels like a wind vane in storm, settling on someone plain as dry earth.

Bernice was a girl whose face was only fair, like a clean stone by a stream.

Her nose was straight as a ridge line, her skin clear as milk glass, yet she was merely pleasant, not a blossom that stunned the spring.

And this very girl now hovered at death’s edge, like a moth singed at a candle’s lip.

“E‑everyone else… are they all dead?” Her voice quivered like a reed in cold wind.

Dragging a left leg cracked like split timber, Bernice swallowed her tears and pressed behind the stairwell wall, a rock-solid blind.

The spot was a good burrow, a shadowed niche where she could watch the stairs and the hall like a fox peeking from brush.

“But…” The word tasted of iron, like blood on the tongue.

Her gaze locked on a ribbon of blood across the concrete, a red thread unraveling on gray stone.

It was her blood, a betrayed trail, a crimson path that sold out her nest like footprints in fresh snow.

Far off, a hulking minotaur thundered closer, each step a drumbeat rolling through the floor like distant thunder.

It stood two and a half meters tall, a cliff of muscle and hide, both hands gripping a one‑meter stone axe like a blunt glacier.

The edge wasn’t sharp, more boulder than blade, yet it was lacquered with the bright red of Bernice’s “companions.”

It didn’t need a razor’s kiss; brute force alone could pound a person into pulp, like fruit beneath a millstone.

“Should I… move the blood trail…” The thought rose like smoke, thin and desperate.

Sweat pooled in her palm like rain in a leaf’s cup as she eyed the smear.

If she used a trick of magic, she could shift the trail like a mirage, sending the beast down a false path like a wolf misled by foxfire.

“Let’s… do it.” She bit down, teeth like flint striking flint.

She knew she couldn’t fight that towering thing, a storm in the shape of a bull.

It could shatter a wall with a lazy swing, like hail punching through glass.

And this monster wasn’t the only one in the ruins, a pack of night hounds roaming the same graveyard.

“Don’t.” The word struck like a thrown pebble on still water.

Just as Bernice braced to cast, a figure slid to her like a shadow crossing the moon, and closed his fingers over her spell-ready hand.

“Whatever you do, don’t cast.”

“Eh?” The breath left her like a bird startled from a branch.

She froze and flushed, heat blooming like a rose under frost.

A very handsome blond man stood before her, his face cut fine as a statue, even though blood streaked him like war paint.

Sweat darkened his hair against his brow, and his clothes hung in tatters like flags after a gale, which only sharpened a hard-edged charm.

A prince to the rescue? The thought flitted like a silver fish.

Her heart tripped like a skittish fawn, her nerves taut as drawn bowstring.

He kept her hand in his, then tipped his head past their cover like a hunter peering from reeds, eyes on the minotaur. “My SSS‑level intel says this minotaur is hypersensitive to magic,” he whispered like wind under a door. “Cast, and you die.”

“Magic… got it. Thank you.” Relief fluttered like a moth freed from a jar.

Bernice looked at Gong Linxun with open gratitude, seeing wisdom and strength woven together like jade and steel.

“Are you also an adventurer of the Gray Fortress?” Her voice was soft as ash settling.

“Mhm. Let me introduce myself. I’m a freelance reporter—Gong Linxun.” His grin flashed like sunlight on glass.

“Eh!? A freelance reporter—that sounds amazing… I’m Bernice. Please take care of me.” Hope chimed like a bell in fog.

In her chest, bright words bloomed like lanterns in dusk: fearless war correspondent, seeker of truth, a fog‑clearing sleuth.

Each title sounded dashing, a cloak that fit him like silk over armor.

But—

Imagination is a silk fan, and reality is a brick.

“So, as a reporter, I’ve got no real combat power, yet a lot of justice to chase,” he said, sheepish as a fox caught with feathers on his whiskers. “Miss, please protect me and get us out of this fortress.”

“Eh…?” Her dream cracked like thin ice.

“Looks like no one else is alive in here,” he added, voice quick as a sparrow. “Just us two mice. We should help each other, right? Any treasure we find, we split even.”

“Ah?” The sound came out small, like a drop in a well.

Bernice realized the “prince” in front of her wasn’t the one from songs, his crown more paper than gold leaf.

“No? Okay then, how about sixty‑forty later? You take six, I take four.” His offer tumbled out like coins from a nervous hand.

He mistook her silence like fog for refusal and upped the price like a street peddler under bright sun.

“N‑no! That’s not it!” She shook her head hard, breath stuttering like a candle in draft. “My left leg… I don’t even know if I’ll live.”

“You… it’s—it’s broken?” His face blanched like flour dust.

“Mm.” The sound was a pebble dropped in a pond.

She eyed her longsword, steel dull under blood, and knew her skills were decent—against people, like a knife good for vegetables.

But their enemy, the ones who fell on the Gray Fortress, weren’t people; they were monsters, a night tide with claws.

There were fifty in the Gray Fortress garrison, a mixed lot like a wild bouquet, yet all seasoned in the Lands of Chaos, each with a trick up the sleeve.

And still, in a single night, they were cut down like wheat under a black scythe.

Bernice didn’t know how it began, only that battle noise clanged like anvils and dragged her from sleep.

She rose into a floor of corpses and horror, a field sown with bodies and beasts.

She fought back, blade flashing like rain, and felled several creatures, each fall a stone dropped down a well.

But in the end, the minotaur’s axe smashed her left leg like a rotten branch, and she fled to this shadowed nook like a rabbit with a snared foot.

“Those monsters are too terrifying…” She felt cold seep in like winter water. “M‑Mr. Gong… how did you get here?”

“Long story,” he said, breath bright with nerves. “I survived thanks to a floor plan I got from a certain boy.”

“A floor plan…?” The word was a torch spark in the dark.

“Yeah. There are more hidden shafts in the Gray Fortress than we mapped, like roots under an old tree,” he said, voice quick like a stream. “One passage leads outside, but the entrance is pinned by monsters. I need your help to get through.”

“There’s a secret passage? Thank goodness… I’ll do my best.” Hope warmed her like tea.

The moment Gong Linxun spoke of a hidden way, a seed of life stirred in her chest like green under frost.

Even if the Gray Fortress had fallen, if she lived, she could still comb the Rainbow Sanctuary for that rare herb, a balm for her brother’s wound.

“Where is the passage?” Her eyes sharpened like flints.

“Follow me.” His answer was a rope thrown across a gap.

“B‑but my foot…” Pain licked at her like fire.

“I’ll carry you.” His words were quick and bright, like a match struck.

“Eh!?” The sound jumped like a bird.

He hoisted her in one motion, her weight settling like a warm quilt across his back.

At a glance he looked manly in crisis, a pillar in the quake.

The truth was messier: this hopeless reporter loved the soft press against his back like a cat loves a sunny sill.

And the rightful grip on a girl’s thigh was a sinful peach he pretended was bread.

Of course, he wouldn’t say any of that aloud; he wore a smile like a paper mask.

…

“Here, Miss Bernice. The passage is behind that bookshelf,” he whispered, breath a thin thread. “Please take out that skeleton.”

“Eh? That one?” Her eyes narrowed like slits in a visor.

He had carried her into a gray study, dust motes drifting like pollen.

In the center stood a skeleton clutching a curved blade and a wooden shield, a scarecrow made of bones.

She thought it might be special, some cursed relic, yet after careful searching like a spider reading its web, she felt no odd runes humming in its bones.

“Mr. Gong, does this skeleton have any tricks?” Her tone was steady as slate.

“N‑no!” His answer cracked like dry twigs.

“Then why ask me—” she began, puzzled as a hen pecking glass.

“Uh…” His hesitation fluttered like a torn flag.

In that pause, Bernice “understood,” the way dawn light pretends to be warmth.

No adventurer who survived the Lands of Chaos would fail against a simple skeleton, a bottom‑tier undead, a pile of firewood in a boneyard.

People without magic could stone one to shards, so even if he was bad at fighting, he could smash it like pottery.

So the only explanation was a soft heart and careful thought; he didn’t want her to owe him, and he wanted to light a wick of hope in her chest.

“I understand, Mr. Gong. I’ll defeat the skeleton.” Her words were rain on parched soil.

A little tear slid down as if from a cut pear, grief and gratitude braided like twine.

“Eh…?” Gong Linxun blinked like an owl in daylight.

He had no idea what she was thinking; he wasn’t a schemer, just a swimmer clutching driftwood.

He had dragged her here because he truly couldn’t beat a skeleton, a fact as plain as dirt.

Even his Skilled‑rank adventurer license had been greased through a back door, a paper shield against a storm.

For all his height and swagger, he was a real waste in a real fight, a rooster with borrowed spurs.

…

Even with a broken leg, Bernice shattered the skeleton in a heartbeat, bones clattering like dry beans on a pan.

Such frames posed no threat to a true adventurer, brittle as winter twigs.

The Gray Fortress’s hidden passage ran long and narrow, a wormhole through stone that let only one person through, bent like a reed in wind.

So Gong Linxun couldn’t carry her; he could only brace her like a crutch and inch forward under stone ribs.

She clenched her teeth, and sweat beaded along her hair like dew on grass, each drop sliding down as if fleeing.

Her left leg’s pain had gone numb like frostbite, yet it kept sapping strength like a leech.

“Just ahead is the exit.” His whisper was a lantern glow.

“Okay.” Her answer was thin but bright as a star.

At last, the exit showed itself, a round handle like a well cover set in iron.

One twist, and they would step into the open fields of the Rainbow Sanctuary, a sea of color beyond carnage.

They wouldn’t have to breathe the tomb‑air of the Gray Fortress, where death and bodies braided like black vines.

But—

The hatch above cracked open like a lid on a coffin.

“So there were two little mice left after all~” The voice was sugar and rot.

A figure appeared, a girl wrapped in bandages from crown to heel, a walking mummy under moonlight.

You could tell she had a girl’s shape, a curve like a willow’s bough, but she was more specter than maiden.

Even her face was swaddled, only the eye sockets open, a darkness like two ink wells.

The bandages weren’t clean, not temple white; they were stained and old, blackened with blood like dried pitch.

Congealed gore slicked them, and fresh seep wept through as if the wound never healed, drip by drip, tapping the stone like rain.

Facing the bandaged girl, Bernice felt an unspeakable terror rise like cold fog from a marsh.

She had the skill of a junior elite by guild measure, a young blade with some polish.

But she knew in one heartbeat that this girl was beyond her, a mountain she could not climb, especially now—

Her left leg was a dead branch, snapped and useless.

So running was a wish on smoke.

“Mr. Gong! Run! I’ll hold her.” Her fear slashed inward, then steadied like iron cooled in water.

“What?” His voice pitched like a skipped note.

“We can’t beat that,” she said, a dry truth like bone.

“Hee‑hee~ Too bad. None of you can run,” the mummy girl sang, her tone a lullaby in a plague house. “Let’s all savor pain together~”

Her attack bloomed like rotting flowers, bandages slithering from nowhere like snakes from a crack.

They stank of putrid blood, a swamp reek that promised venom; a touch would slough skin like acid eating through wax.

“Run, Mr. Gong!” Bernice screamed, hope tearing like paper.

She was already at the cliff’s edge, but at least she could buy him a breath, a heartbeat, a sparrow’s wingbeat.

Let this be her last ember, a tiny light in the storm.

“I—I’m not afraid!” His voice rang thin but stubborn, a reed whistling in gale.

Gong Linxun wasn’t alive by luck alone; he had one last hidden blade, a joke dressed as a sword.

“This kind of bondage play needs an older queen like Lord Dawn Goose to be any fun!” he blurted, shameless as a magpie.

“Eh!?” Bernice’s mind seized like a wheel in mud.

“Behold the relic I got from the World Tree Maiden…” His eyes gleamed like a thief with a talisman.

As he whipped out his “trump card,” the mummy girl’s bandages froze mid‑lunge like snakes turned to stone.

Bernice’s face went stiff as baked clay, disbelief drying her throat.

Because what Gong Linxun pulled out was—

A pair of panties.

A girl’s panties.

Pink‑and‑white stripes, soft as cotton clouds, absurd as a lotus in a sword rack.

The panties flared like a small sun, flooding the passage with light. The mummy girl staggered back, blue smoke curling off her skin, then fled outside.

"Hahaha! Well? Faced with a relic brimming with life, you're scared, aren't you?"

"Y-you fiends! Why do you even have that thing?"

"Every beast has its bane!"

Gong Linxun hoisted the panties like a banner and swaggered with Bernice from the tunnel. "Good thing I swiped Ailuna's panties," he crowed, pride puffing like steam. "Turns out she's the World Tree Maiden—jackpot!" His eyes glittered like coins.

"Steal?" Bernice’s voice quivered like a reed by water. "Mr. Gong… you…"

"Uh… er…" His words stumbled like loose stones.

"Mr. Gong, so you’re… the creep who steals girls’ panties?" Her gaze was a knife wrapped in silk.

"Ah! I bragged myself into a slip!" He clutched his head like a guilty crow.

"Mn… mn…" Bernice’s breath hitched like a trapped bird.

Though Gong Linxun used the panties to guide Bernice out, her eyes held no survivor’s glow—only a dim storm behind glass.

In its place, disbelief and a fall of the heart—like seeing your idol peeing by the roadside in daylight.

By then the sky was paling, dawn washing the world like watered ink.

Across the way, the mummy girl slumped on the meadow by the hidden exit, spent to the bone, blue smoke drifting off her like mist.

"Hah… hah…" She rasped, breath like bellows. "Don’t think this lets you run free!"

"Uh… Ms. Bernice! Let’s bolt!" Gong Linxun’s nerves twanged like strings. "If she recovers, we’re cooked."

Bernice stared, blank as fog, legs refusing like rooted willows.

"Sorry!" He bit down on fear like leather.

Teeth clenched, Gong Linxun scooped the dazed girl onto his back and shot off like a streak of smoke.

Just like when he’d fled a girl’s dorm before—feet drumming like rain.

Only then, he carried panties like contraband silk. Now… he carried a girl like warm moonlight.